Although California has a long history of the commercial growing of oranges and other citrus, citrus trees are not native to California. Citrus is native to South and East Asia, Melanesia and Australia. Sweet oranges were introduced to the Mediterranean from Asia by Genoese and Portuguese traders in the 15th-16th centuries. Franciscan missionaries brought sweet oranges to California around 1769. The first citrus orchard was planted in 1804 at the San Gabriel Mission, east of Los Angeles. The first commercial orange orchard was planted in 1841 near what is now downtown Los Angeles.
What is likely the oldest living orange tree in California, however, is growing right here in Butte County. The Mother Orange tree originated in Mazatlan, Mexico. It was planted in 1856 near the tollhouse for the Bidwell Bar suspension bridge, which spanned the middle fork of the Feather River, after Judge Joseph Lewis bought the 2-to 3-year-old seedling in Sacramento. The tree has been transplanted twice. In 1862 it was moved to the other end of the bridge due to the threat of flooding. In 1964 it was moved to 800 Glen Drive in Oroville during the construction of Oroville Dam. According to one of the plaques by the tree, “Early-day miners traveled from far and wide to eat her sweet oranges, gather the seeds, and plant them in the yards of their homes.”
Retired UC Cooperative Extension Farm Advisor Joseph Connell writes, “Following the success of the Mother Orange, by 1863 75 acres of orange trees had been planted in the county.” Orange production in Butte County peaked around 1900, when 3300 acres were devoted to orange cultivation; by 2007, orange acreage had declined to 162 acres (History of Butte County's Citrus Industry and the Mother Orange Tree).
The Mother Orange was damaged by severe freezes in 1990 and 1998. It stopped producing oranges, and its survival was in doubt. With additional care by Connell and the California Department of Parks and Recreation, the Mother Orange has recovered from the freeze damage and is again producing fruit. Extra efforts, including heat lamps and water misters, are employed to protect the tree from any more damage.
In an effort to maintain the existence of its genome, four new trees using budwood collected in 2001 from the Mother Orange were propagated at the University of California, Riverside (UCR) Citrus Clonal Protection Project (CCPP). Budwood is a short, leafless twig with buds used for grafting on another plant in order to propagate vegetatively. Two of the trees were planted in the UCR Citrus Variety Collection. The third and fourth were planted in Oroville, one in the orange grove next to the Lott home in Sank Park and the other next to the Butte County Historical Society Museum. A fifth tree locally propagated at the same time was planted at the Patrick Ranch Museum south of Chico.
The CCPP began at UCR in 1956. The first such project in the world, its purpose is to provide a safe mechanism for improving citrus varieties, introducing new varieties for research, and for propagating citrus for commercial or personal use. By law, every newly propagated citrus tree in the state can be traced back to a mother tree created through the program. This requirement ensures that all new citrus plants are disease-free. Incoming trees are tested for more than 30 citrus diseases. Any diseases identified in the first round of testing are eliminated by heat treatment of infected buds or shoot tip micrografting using small pieces of growing tips for new propagation. All propagations produced during the treatments are again tested for citrus diseases. Once a new tree passes the screening tests, it receives a variety index or VI number necessary for release to the public. The most recent variety index number, VI 1000, was awarded in June 2022 to a tree propagated at UCR with budwood from a clone of the Mother Orange tree. Dubbed the “Bidwell's Bar” variety, its budwood will now be available for purchase by commercial nurseries and citrus enthusiasts. Information about buying budwood from Bidwell's Bar or other citrus varieties is available at the CCPP website.
UC Master Gardeners of Butte County are part of the University of California Cooperative Extension (UCCE) system. To learn more about us and our upcoming events, and for help with gardening in our area, visit our website. If you have a gardening question or problem, email the Hotline at mgbutte@ucanr.edu or leave a phone message on our Hotline at (530) 538-7201. To speak to a Master Gardener about a gardening issue, or to drop by the MG office during Hotline hours, see the most current information on our Ask Us Hotline webpage.
A vacant lot on a residential street is a common sight that goes unnoticed, except when the vacant lot is repurposed and transformed into a community garden. Research shows that community gardens offer a host of benefits for neighborhoods, including improvement of the physical and mental health of patrons, creation of community partnerships and educational opportunities, provision of fresh, locally grown food, and strikingly, reduction in neighborhood crime.
Use of the formerly vacant lot that is now Kentfield Gardens is the gift of a neighborhood resident who owns the lot and lives across the street. This generous individual even pays for the water used for the garden. Funding for improvements to the property (like the covered seating area and outdoor kitchen) as well as ongoing maintenance comes from donations and grants.
Wendy LeMaster, who has a BA in microbiology from CSU Chico, oversees the youth programs at Kentfield Gardens and has volunteered there since its inception. In the beginning her hope was “to provide kids with an opportunity to learn gardening skills while enjoying each other's company in an outdoor environment, which allowed them to socialize after a long period of time when they weren't able to, due to the pandemic.” Since then, she says, the program called Kentfield Kids has expanded and become “a community for parents, friends, family and little ones to come together and enjoy nutritious foods, share recipes, gardening techniques, giggles and more.”
LeMaster says that GROWN encompasses much of what she had already been doing at Kentfield, with a few changes: “I've modified my program to reflect a hybrid of the Teen Group and our Young Bud group, providing an hour of mentorship opportunity for our teens to work with our younger gardeners. Each group still has an hour of fun activity focused on their age group, and as always, this program remains free and families are still welcome to join us. The only other thing that's changed is now I get to bring these garden programs to schools throughout the county…. GROWN is a Butte County Local Food Network Project, which has been made possible by a generous grant awarded to BCLFN through the county, and I'm excited to see what we can accomplish.”
The Butte County Local Food Network lists eight community gardens on its website. Among them is Vecino Garden in Chico, located at 1535 Laburnum Avenue in the backyard of a private residence. This 1/3 acre property contains garden beds, fruit trees, a greenhouse, a neighborhood composting center, and a shaded seating area.
As of January 1, 2022, California has a new, statewide mandatory organic waste collection law aimed at reducing methane emissions by diverting organic waste from landfills (SB 1383). The county of Butte has a year and a half to develop a plan to implement the law, but Vecino Garden is already teaching and promoting neighborhood composting, funded by a grant from CalRecycle implemented through California Alliance for Community Composting.
According to Caitlin Dalby, Executive Director of the Butte Environmental Council, neighborhood gardeners rent plots in Oak Way Garden for 50 cents per square foot, paid to the City to cover the cost of water. The yearly cost of a plot 25 by 25 feet is about $312 per year; a plot 15 by 15 feet is about $112/year, and the garden always has a waiting list.
Dalby says the garden was created to enable people to grow fresh food and to promote urban gardening as part of a healthy lifestyle. In addition, Oak Way Garden offers a composting program through Drop in the Bucket Bicycle Powered Compost Service. The service picks up compostable food scraps from nearby neighborhoods and brings the materials to Oak Way Garden via bicycle for composting at the garden.
How many more unused plots of land in Butte County could be transformed into productive gardens? The Butte Environmental Council hopes to locate properties in other neighborhoods for additional community gardens. And, Dalby says, the Council is also involved in a wide range of projects including tree planting, recycling, composting, K-12 educational outreach and coalition building.
Consensus about the value of community gardens continues to grow. A 2020 big-picture review of 45 studies conducted by researchers at Cornell University concluded that “properly designed and maintained outdoor green space (including community gardens) has the potential to reduce violent crime and gun violence, to make communities safer and keep residents healthier” (Green space can reduce violent crime - Neuroscience News).
For more information, see the following resources:
Project for Public Spaces: Beyond Food: Community Gardens as Places of Connection and Empowerment (pps.org)
Butte County Local Food Network: Butte County Local Food Network (bclocalfood.org)
Butte Environmental Council: Butte Environmental Council (becnet.org)
GROWN: Growing Resilient Optimism With Nature – Butte County Local Food Network (bclocalfood.org)
UC Master Gardeners of Butte County are part of the University of California Cooperative Extension (UCCE) system. To learn more about us and our upcoming events, and for help with gardening in our area, visit our website. If you have a gardening question or problem, email the Hotline at mgbutte@ucanr.edu or leave a phone message on our Hotline at (530) 538-7201. To speak to a Master Gardener about a gardening issue, or to drop by the MG office during Hotline hours, see the most current information on our Ask Us Hotline webpage.
By fall most summer-blooming plants have run their course, while summer-dormant plants are just beginning to start their new growth for the season. You may feel your garden needs more color. Luckily for the gardener, there are some native plants which continue to bloom well into the fall and others which begin to bloom in late fall.
Fall is the best time to plant natives as they have time to get their roots established before the heat of next summer. If you plant some fall-bloomers now, you'll have some great color at this time next year.
A short drive around Chico will reveal that lawn is a prominent landscape feature for the majority of homes. Yet we seldom see people outside using their front lawns. Maintaining a lawn just to view wastes time, energy, water and money. According to a 2011 study sponsored by the California Department of Water Resources (“California Single Family Water Use Efficiency Study”), the average household uses 360 gallons of water per day, around 50% of it outdoors. Replacing lawn with waterwise landscaping can reduce outdoor water use by 30-70%. In addition, lawns need mowing, fertilizing and weeding.
Start with hardscaping: walkways, gravel paths, small patios or decks, dry creek beds and retaining walls. These provide visual interest and reduce irrigated areas. Plan a pleasing and obvious walkway to your front door. You can edge it with intervals of plantings, in the ground or in urns. Meandering gravel paths provide a functional and low-cost way to move about the garden. A small patio invites you to relax. Dry creek beds and small retaining walls separate planting areas and provide elevation changes. You can also use an edging of stone or brick to separate planting areas.
The New Sunset Western Garden Book and Calscape (California Native Plant Society's database of native plants) provide information about waterwise plants. If your yard will include automatic irrigation, group together plants with similar water needs.
The UC Cooperative Extension WUCOLS database estimates the water needs of thousands of garden plants and is a valuable tool for grouping plants into hydrozones.
Consider adding focal points. A water feature attracts birds to the garden. It can be as elaborate as a fountain or as simple as a ceramic dish. Large boulders also provide visual interest. A bench flanked by large pots of colorful flowering plants invites you to sit and enjoy your garden.
Visit the Master Gardener Demonstration Garden at Patrick Ranch (10381 Midway in Durham) to see a variety of gardens that are waterwise, interesting and beautiful without relying on areas of lawn. Our gardens are free to visit and are open whenever Patrick Ranch is open to the public.
We have endured multiple years of drought, and are probably in store for more. For many of us, it makes sense to replace all or part of our lawn area with less water-intensive plantings.
Step One: observe and plan. What existing trees and plants do you want to keep or remove? What are the sun and shade patterns within your yard? What types of grass grow in your lawn? Do you want any additional amenities, such as paving or a shade structure? How will you irrigate your new plants?
Step Two: kill your lawn. Homeowners can use two eco-friendly methods to kill their lawns: Solarizing or Sheet Mulching. For detailed instructions on solarizing, click here. For instructions on sheet mulching, click here.
Sheet mulching kills weeds by starving them of light. It takes 6 to 10 months and can be started any time of the year as long as at least three months of growing season are included. Sheet mulching works in sun or shade, and is effective on all grasses, including Bermuda grass, and many annual and perennial weeds. It is left in place permanently; over time, the dead lawn, sheeting, and mulch will break down into soil-enriching compost. Sheet mulching should be placed before new plants are installed if being used alone to kill lawn or weeds. It can be placed after plants are installed if solarizing has been completed first. New hardscape and irrigation should be installed before commencing solarizing or sheet mulching.
Step Three: replant. Whichever method you choose to kill your lawn, time it so that you are ready to replant in the fall, winter, or early spring. The cool temperatures and moist soils of our wet season allow drought tolerant plants to develop the healthy roots they need to thrive with little water during the heat of summer. Taking time to thoroughly kill the grass and waiting until the climate conditions are suitable for new plants will ensure the long-term success of a lawn replacement project.
UC Master Gardeners of Butte County are part of the University of California Cooperative Extension (UCCE) system. To learn more about us and our upcoming events, and for help with gardening in our area, visit our website. If you have a gardening question or problem, email the Hotline at mgbutte@ucanr.edu or leave a phone message on our Hotline at (530) 538-7201. To speak to a Master Gardener about a gardening issue, or to drop by the MG office during Hotline hours, see the most current information on our Ask Us Hotline webpage.